NEW DELHI: The Centre has asked members of the high-power committee that was tasked with recommending ways of restoring normalcy in the JNU campus, for additional inputs before it makes up its mind on whether to follow its recommendations.

The committee under former University Grants Commission (UGC) chairman, V S Chauhan, which includes UGC secretary Rajneesh Jain and All India Council of Technical Education chairman, Anil Sahasrabudhe had already submitted its recommendations to the Union Human Resources Development Ministry last week.

The Ministry has now asked the panel, to analyse the hostel fee charged by other Central Universities and also the trends in fee hike in those institutions, this newspaper has learnt. “We want to compare the hike proposed by JNU vis-a-vis other centrally funded universities in the recent past,” an official said.  

The committee has recommended against introducing any immediate fee hike without talking to students and teachers’ bodies and has also highlighted that a lack of dialogue under the present administration is leading to strikes.

JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar had not met with the committee despite the panel’s directive. Officials said that the government is of the view that any fee hike in centrally funded institutes can only be gradual and introduced through consensus.

“We think the government will not recommend a complete rollback of the proposed fee, but such a sharp hike in fee in educational institutions is likely to create crisis like the present one,” another official said.